The Cain campaign gathers attention with the musical chairs game of the contest, sending Pawlenty, McCotter from the field and leaving Bachmann, Huntsman, Santorum, Gingrich, Johnson, as unready. Herman Cain is ready. Cain boasts he is not a politician; Cain promotes Cain with genius; Cain entertains and motivates and inspires. For all this, Cain is weakest where the GOP needs the strength, on being a cautious pol who can survive the national contest against a nimble superstar of a sitting POTUS. Cain resembles most to me the Wendell Willkie candidacy of 1940. Willkie also entertained, motivated and inspired; and the Philadelphia convention of 1940 saw a groundswell of support to raise Willkie up regardless of the fact that he was unknown, untested, and not much of a party man. Willkie emphasized that he was a self-made executive, but the inconvenient fact was that he prospered as a New York attorney who networked with the Manhattan literati and swells. The GOP tried Willkie just because the despair of the Great Depression and the hammering by the forever relentless FDR left it without good choices. Dewey? Sure, but when (1944 and 1948)?  Willkie accepted the nomination after the brouhaha and campaigned tirelessly and effectively, and lost by a smaller landslide than Kansas Alf Landon had in 1936. Not much for the effort for the GOP. Later, FDR used Willkie as a roving wartime ambassador, and the choice fairy tale is that Willkie partied his way across a flying tour of Asia, spending Shangri-La time in Madame Chiang Kai-shek's embrace. Maybe. My less than melodramatic observation is that when I hear Cain taking a position, I hear the perfect tones of a tyro on a winning streak, not a nimble veteran pol from a compromised state apparatus. Romney and Perry, with many tics, both understand that government is managing a vast post office-like workforce, some of which carries guns; and also competing with the roosters of the Senate and the hens of the House. Cain, like Willkie before him, manages the pitch perfectly; and that is a lot to ask, and you are wrong to want more. "We Want Willkie!" And you got Willkie, period. "We Want Cain!" and you will get Cain, period. 

The spectacle of the governor of New Jersey traveling to the Reagan Library to repeat the same obvious detail -- that is, that he is not a candidate for the presidency -- underlines the sluggishness of the Republican process. Romney churns along, unloved and dutifully-financed and well-organized. Perry struggles with self-inflicted wounds and possibly a bad back. The rest of the field gets attention from a trite media seeking to file a story that does not say the same thing again, that it is a two-man race, and the snows of Iowa and New Hampshire begin the marathon. Romney satisfies no one on the right. Perry satisfies no one on the non-right. POTUS Obama is vulnerable to the point of helplessness with the GDP flashing More Great Recession and the long winter of European discontent ahead. Hence the Chris Christie scenario -- game the system with the ingenue GOP politician from a deep Blue State and see who hesitates to heed Romney vs. Perry. Chris Christie is not a candidate. End story. Sarah Palin, Mitch Daniels, Rudy Giuliani, not candidates. The contest between Romney and Perry is a choice between two unappealing alternatives, a lot like shopping for back-to-school clothes. No matter how it looks, you still have to go to class and do homework and wait out the end of term. Fourteen months to the election, no one is excited by anything. The New Normal is: been there, done that, so let's repeat the same mistakes. Some speak of Romney as a turnaround guy. Mostly he is a turn-off guy.  Perry is lame or dopey or out of shape.  Advantage Romney.  Exit Christie one more time.  Is it possible to vote for none of the above and still defeat the Obama administration?

Speaking Lee Ohanian, UCLA and Hoover, re how the 1930s followed the theory of boosting aggregate demand by injecting stimulus into the sagging economy, but that this did not lead to successful growth. Instead, it led to a sluggish consumer economy -- meaning weak aggregate demand -- that was distorted by mandating that two or more can do the job of one: 

 "...unemployment did decline between 1933 and 1937. But declining unemployment reflected significant work-sharing in New Deal policies that began in 1933 with the President's Reemployment Agreement and continued with the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Work-sharing increased employment by spreading jobs across more people. Spreading scarce jobs was probably desirable. But the key point is that higher aggregate demand didn't significantly expand the amount of work that was done." 

Also, Ohanian and his colleage Harold Cole, Penn, argue that most of the growth in the 1930s came from productivity gains while the labor input actually declined: 

"Productivity growth continued to be the major factor for the rest of the 1930s, accounting for about three-quarters of the growth in real per capita output that occurred between 1932 and 1939. But despite rapid productivity growth, the economy remained well below trend because labor input failed to recover. In 1939, labor input as measured by total hours worked per adult was more than 20% below the 1929 level." 

There were other problems created by Federal intervention, such as the NRA creating monopolies that were obliged to pay wages out of proportion with profit, and mandating labor union power with the Wagner Act that led to scenes of market freeze when wildcat strikes and sit-downs distorted production planning.  This all adds up the warnings that the Obama administration market maneuvers - with regard stimulus, temporary tax cuts, raising marginal rates for the well-to-do, raising rates on cap gains, extending unemployment benefits indefinitely, and other adjustments - are all retarding growth. The good professors recommend POTUS and Congress heed the quiet voices that urge tax reforms and also policies that encourage investment risk and hiring risk: 

Speaking Larry Kudlow, Evan Newmark, Dawn Kopecki, re the troubles obvious in the markets just now - lack of confidence in the Eurozone, anticipation of worldwide slowdown in consumer purchasing, commodities sell-off - and how this present gloom relates to the Obama administration's dutiful attachment to the script that failed in the 1930s, the stimulus of the Federal government trying to create demand when in fact it only made it worse - and showed those who increased productivity without hiring that this was the cautious way to survive the decade. Washington choosing winners means that only those who avoid Washington's manners actually can survive.  Command economic thinking fails; Adam Smith's invisible hand succeeds.

POTUS Obama goes confrontational at the same time he chooses to demonstrate that he is golfing with POTUS Clinton. Connection? Obama is quoted purposefully from the CBC dinner to the closed fundraisers in California in speaking of "push-back" against FNC and the Wall Street Journal. Why does a president become a predictable media critic? Because POTUS needs an opponent, a villain, an organizing Martian invader to use as a debating opponent as he raises money. POTUS uses Rick Perry as an enemy: "a governor whose state is on fire, denying climate change." POTUS asserts that not only are his opponents wrong but also that he is compelled to speak bluntly because, "This is a choice about the fundamental direction of our country: 2008 was an important direction; 2012 is a more important election." POTUS insists that his re-election is a crisis time: "We're going to have a stark choice in this election," he said. "This is a choice about who we are and what we stand for, and whoever wins this next election is going to set the template for this country for a long time to come." Why is POTUS committing himself to such empty talk now?  Why is POTUS using such a flimsy metaphor as "template" about his re-election?  Perhaps because there is money trouble for the campaign. Small Donors Are Slow to Return to the Obama Fold" by NICHOLAS CONFESSORE: "The frustration and disillusionment that have dragged down President Obama's approval ratings have crept into the ranks of his vaunted, small-donor army." 

Perhaps also because POTUS is told that his Third Way strategy failed with the public. POTUS Clinton faced a completely Republican Congress from 1995 to 2001. Clinton presented himself as the Third Way between the Democrats and Republicans. It worked for Clinton re-election; then it failed for the Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment ordeal.  POTUS Obama now parading to the senior swells in California and enduring the trivial momentum of celebrity-raising money from the puppy swells in order to remain a celebrity: From SF Chronicle Carla Marinucci twitter page:  "Lady Gaga wears basic black sleeveless gown, high heels,updo -- and pays her own way at $38,500 pp Obama fundraiser COO @SherlySandberg home. (left)."  It is also possible that POTUS praised the obvious GOP officials just because it is a coherent electioneering strategy as opposed to his domestic and foreign policy these last two years.  Measure that baiting media critics is a mug's game and a sign of presidential drift.

Speaking Steve Cohen, NYU, on Monday 26 re the occasion of Putin and Medvedev switching places in Moscow to continue the strongman rule of the last years of Russia's success.  Russia is an energy superstar that is well positioned to trade its oil and gas and commodities riches for economic and manufacturing development into the century.  Spoke Israeli Minister Yuli Edelstein of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs (Russian/Soviet-born) and learned that during a meeting in the Kremlin between Israeli officials and Putin, the premier (who now aims to be president) sat with 3"x5" card notes and focused sharply on building a new plant of an Israeli-owned company, the pharmaceutical giant Teva, in Russia, with Russian workers.  The tourist exchange between Israel and Russia is rich and growing, not only Russian Jews but most amazingly Russian Christians on pilgrimages.  The Russians are keen to exploit the burgeoning Israeli economy (projected up to 4.8% in 2011, triple that of the West).  Steve Cohen mentions that the Putin move back to the presidency is a defeat for the Obama administration, which has backed Medvedev heavily these last years.  Am told that VPOTUS Biden in Moscow recently also spoke in praise of Medvedev's next term.  The "reset" from the summer of 2009 is not a reboot by Putin.  Does this signify in the president election in the US?  Not much.  It does underline the continued poor logic and clumsy maneuvering of the Obama administration.  Putin is the New Tsar, obvious these last ten years.  POTUS Obama's arrogance in Moscow in the summer of 2009 is not forgotten at the Kremlin.  Reset fail.

The Obama administration has developed a gaming cliché of "doubling down" on this and that policy or decision or reaction, and it looks to have spilled over to the Fed as it moves yet again with a stimulus of  the same old fashion as before -- doubling down -- to revive or even just to keep from failing both the US and worldwide economies, which is why the US and Asia markets sold off predictably.   No one much believes the Fed.  The European markets are digging another crater as I write.   The Fed's trendy "Operation Twist" is a flop:

The new excuse for the White House is that POTUS should have told us in 2009 that the world was in the grip of a decade-long depression and deflation, caused by a credit bubble and other too-good-to-be-true fictions, and that any improvement would come slowly and miraculously, so roll up the sleeves and row. Or some such metaphor for industry. Instead, POTUS Obama told us that his economic devisors were ready to stimulate the US back to GDP growth and jobs restoration. Now the Obama administration is in the same gloomy cul-de-sac as the other command-based propaganda machines that pass the finance ministries and banking analysis. The globalization build-out of the fin de siecle (apologize for French clichés, oops) produced a credit-inflated bubble that spread the falsehoods of progress and growth without pain. to all the usual suspects. From Baltimore to Kashgar to Perth. Now we have to work off the credit drunk. Boom and bust, bubbles and crashes, may be the nature of Adam Smith.  Fine with me. The way to get rich is to make and lose two fortunes before you figure out that selling too early works and buying when there is blood in the streets can work (unless you are buying early, like John Paulson). POTUS Obama's fate is an indifference. No replacement part in the Oval Office (not even the Wise Businessman Romney nor the Yahoo Prayer Bot Perry) can wish away the Great Recession. The housing collapse is an expression of the credit bubble from the globalization mania. Time and thrift and common sense will retire the growth for the young and ambitious. The boomers have topped out. Welcome Gen Xers to the command and control of the circus. POTUS Obama was a late-boomer host, and Ben Bernanke was a mid-Boomer sage; and neither could hurry time. All they could do is keep pacing and foot-tapping like the rest os us. The Twentieth Century business model failed just at the last moment.  Now for the New Normal of what you can pay for in a single Greek lifetime.

Rick Perry shrewdly lands in New York City for two fundraisers in the midst of the entanglement over the PA demand for statehood without negotiation from the UN Security Council. POTUS Obama is stuck somewhere in his nuanced incoherence re the Middle East. The 2009 embassies to Istanbul and Cairo shadow the Obama administration, since both governments have now turned toxic anti-Israeli in a competition for Boss Islam. Tehran stands by to cause as much trouble as possible if Cairo and Ankara flag. Perry sees the obvious opening and takes advantage by calling the Obama administration "naive," on the sit rep. No argument. POTUS pays no price for his duplicity and incoherence, however, because the Jewish voters in critical Electoral College states remain ruefully loyal to the Democratic machines. PErry can exploit the evangelical mines that are attacked to Jersualem and Israel, and that is good Texas and Southern and GOP political gaming. Mitt Romney has no card to play, since his sincere Mormonism is a mystery to the same constituents that celebrate Perry's boisterous yahooism. Rick Perry with a yarmulke under his ten-gallon hat is smart. Spoke Malcolm Hoenlein, Irwin Cotler, Ido Aharoni (Israeli Consul NY), Marc Ginsberg, Robert Satloff (Washington Institute) re the M. Abbas cynicism to assert statehood. Game is afoot. Nations that know better are playing along by not loudly rejecting Abbas as a fool and liar. Traveling West Bank these next hours to see if the Abbas constituents are responding to his manipulations. Described to me by Pinchas Inbari of Jerusalem Center for Public Policy as the 3rd intifada. The first was stones. The second was bombs. The third is diplomacy. POTUS Obama gambit to meet with Abbas is a fail, because it empowers the fool Abbas with photo op for lies in Arabic media. POTUS Obama gambit to assert 1967 borders talk to PM Netanyahu is a fail, because it uses the same delusional language of the agitprop PLO media. The war warning I came to find is right in front of us. The Palestinian cause is a provocation to arouse and launch the mobs of Egypt and Jordan and Lebanon and Turkey. There will be rockets.  Will POTUS pay a price for his feckless and phony gestures to the fool Arabs?  Nope.  How many Electoral College votes to the Israelis have?  Not one, because the American Jews vote Democratic till doom.  NY9 is no threat to NY, NJ, and CN.

The Obama campaign looks to recreate the winning impertinence of the 2008 crusade of the pesky Blue kids who overwhelmed imperious Mrs.Clinton and stormed past the grouchy John McCain.  Early buzz suggest that the remake, Yes We Can Part II, is a flop in rehearsals. A sitting presidency is not an office that gets through a day without being pummeled by some unusually determined cranks. The White House may be without a theme that makes sense. The ingenue spirit is gone with the jobless rate of the under 30. The results for 32 months of the administration are mixed to weak. Spoke John Fund, at Hoover, who remarked that the nation hired a candidate without executive experience, and what we got was a president who thinks of himself and his victimhood first and second, who promotes his re-election to the exclusion of his own party in addition to the unaligned and the merely jobless nobodies.  Responding to the remarks of other politicians does not require extra care and snitches: it is dialogue, debate, electioneering.  This is an election about the fate of the nation, about policy that has not worked as foretold, about an executive who continues to play class warfare games rather than listen to other opinions of the jobs strike.  The farce that followed quickly because of this trite construction may be a harbinger of more fail ahead.  The gang that couldn't snitch straight.  Hint, it's not about you, Mr. President; it never was.

What's happened to Michele Bachmann? Is it her gaffe-prone brainiac mode? Is it the aspirational midday talk show hostess on the campaign trail? Is it the one-liners without policy foundation? Is it gender? Bachmann scored a narrow victory over robotic Ron Paul at the Iowa straw poll, and since then the narrative is that she can do nothing right. Luckless Pawlenty dropped out because of Bachmann's win, and perhaps he has second thoughts. There is no cohesion around any national candidate. Lucky Rick Perry started strong, but his talent looks to be that the more you hear, the less you hear.   Luckless Mitt Romney plods along, the sturdy non-Republican in the Republican camp. Ron Paul appeals to the witty young. The rest of the field is smug about being the rest of the field. Only Bachmann looked to be a tyro, and yet she peaked before it was obvious she was ahead of her planning.  Her performance art ended on the first page of copy. The odd appearance on the veteran Tonight Show demonstrates that Bachmann may have jumped from candidate to personality to celebrity to TV star in search of a chat show.  The camping and overacting on the Tonight set does not improve her street cred as a road warrior of the GOP.  Does she think she needs publicity? The "titanium" trope lost out weeks ago as a political mission.  No one is attacking now that Pawlenty wandered off stage.  Bachmann next going to try for a spot on Dancing with the Stars?  Is this the curse of the social media age: the recycled and repurposed celebrity mom pol?  Bachmann as a knock-off hand-puppet version of the great and terrible Palin doll?

Am traveling to Jerusalem in order to devote the new week to broadcasting about the complex security threat to the State of Israel and the thirty-one year peace along the Negev desert border with the Sinai Peninsula.  While I am here, M. Abbas and his cronies will travel to New York to make mischief at the United Nations by asserting PA sovereignty without negotiations and without interest in accommodation to the Israeli desire for defensible borders.  The Abbas law fare ploy is not credible and is regarded as a legacy gambit for his failed decade since Arafat's tumultuous demise.  I will broadcast five nights: three from the studio at the Jerusalem Post in western Jerusalem, an industrial park area, a loft-like manufacturing building that serves as offices and printing plant; another evening from the large town of Beersheva in the Negev, about two hours south by auto from Tel Aviv and three hours from Jerusalem in traffic. The fifth night will likely be from the Golan Heights along the Syria and Lebanon border. Have broadcasted sixteen different times from Israel since 2003, more than four months total time, dating from the hot war with the PLO during the siege of Bethlehem in the Spring of 2003 (Operation Protective Shield) to the forced Israeli settlement evacuation of the Gaza Strip in the Fall of 2005. This trip will be working closely with colleague Aaron Klein to discern the level of threat on the Sinai border as compared to the imminent threat of rocketing from Lebanon. Syria has collapsed into a slow-motion civil war. The looming tower of the Middle East is the deterioration of order in Egypt. The makeshift governance in Cairo of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces cannot answer the failure of the economy nor the sinister momentum of the Moslem Brothers. Most especially the Gaza Strip is now in the hands of gangsters who believe victory is at hand over the Negev and Sinai - turning this vastness into a rogue state within two states. No one much wants Gaza now, and with the territory fully armed with battlefield mortars and rockets and a game militia, it is as much a threat to Cairo as Jerusalem. The Obama administration's flirtation with Hamas and the PA these last three years has brought the always broken, futile situation to unpredictable ruination. At Beersheva, am told that over these last weeks at least one 122mm rocket with a Russian serial number crashed into the town - and it can be traced directly from the Moscow sale to the Libya arsenal. There will be more blood. The Golan requires more study; however the formula is straightforward: Turkey under the malevolent T.R. Erdogan will make a play to become the strongman of the region by leading a NATO intervention into Syria. At that point, Tehran triggers a regional war against Israel. Welcome that well known beast "slouching toward" Jerusalem.

POTUS electioneering of his American Jobs Act is a slow-motion fail, and we can see in POTUS strident repetition that he does not have an audience in Washington or in the critical Electoral College states for his tardy palaver.  Spoke to Larry Kudlow, Joseph Brusuelas, Jon Hilsenrath, Michael Boskin, Steve Moore re the slowdown in the US economy and what emerged was the theme that the US does not grow again as long as POTUS is running or election -- that all hiring and expansions decisions will be put off until 2013 and the new 113th Congress, that there is a jobs strike against Washington.  If POTUS Obama is returned, then the companies will make accommodations for the anti-growth and centralized government of the second term.  Until then, there is no confidence in the regulatory overhang and the regime uncertainty.  The major struggles for corporate planning are domestic healthcare and the worldwide slowdown of demand.  The major problems for banks are a spreading credit strike and the absence of confidence in Europe and the US.  The European banking crisis is a follow-on to the failure of the banks too big to fail in 2008.  POTUS Obama did not cause this freezing up; but he didn't help matters when he heaved borrowed Federal money into state jobs programs; and the administration of later-day-Keynesians doesn't improve the economy now when it proposes more make-work (stimulus) jobs programs with Federal dollars for state workers (teachers) and contractors (shovel-ready construction).   POTUS American Jobs Act is so inapt and ill-timed that it is not even wrong.  It is the WPA of 1933 that failed in 2009 and is now reawakened in a dream of campaigning.   What does the NY9 loss mean for the Democrats?  That the Obama administration has lost the argument with its own party, on foreign policy (Israel) and on domestic policy (stimulus).  Sauve qui peut.  Save what you can.  Like the WPA days, every man for himself on the way to CCC camps.

Rick Perry's "Social Security is a Ponzi scheme" gambit is paying off for the early campaign in that it gets the governor attention and publicity.  The remark is wrong on the face of it, because Ponzi is a crime.  Mitt Romney was shrewd to attack, during the so-called CNN/Tea Party debate in Florida, on the Perry sloppiness.  Perry did not respond substantively, and we were left with a two-man debate with other characters looking in and complaining that the governor of Texas is too short, too bold, too stupid, too shallow, too not-like-me.  The GOP is comfortable with a field of single-issue candidates, each standing for a special posture in the GOP that was briefly a topic at some time in the last year.  The TV producers have figured that to keep all eyes from closing and changing the channel, they must mask the fact that it is Perry's nomination to lose and Romney's to lose faster.  Ron Paul jumped the shark in the 20th Century, and here in the 21st he is not even wrong, just cranky and drone-like repetitive.  Michele Bachmann seems shorter each time, and either her wild language is duller than before or we have just gotten used to the shrill meaninglessness of her genius.  Jon Huntsman might hurt himself with his out-of-placedness.  Gingrich, Cain, Santorum are trite.  What is left are the non-personality of Romney, and the risk that Rick Perry might not wear well into a long winter in Iowa and New Hampshire.  Does Rick Perry have another face beside smug or irked or Marlboro?  How about curious or at least conscientious?  Gee.  Can Perry born in Texas or Romney born in Mexico, separated at birth by an El Paso wind, defeat POTUS Obama?  Nah, for all the obvious reasons: cynicism, parochialism, trivialities, dullness, smallness, sloppiness.  The election is about Barack Obama, and he must lose it.

Tell my small 9/11 tale. It starts Saturday 9/8, when I did the WABC four hour Saturday night show, 9-1 am, on the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in October 2000 in Aden harbor, Yemen: the focus of the show was, how come we haven't found the terrorists who did it? and what was the latest on the pursuit of the killers? This was the first time I had fixed on the name Bin Laden and the gang of Al Q, first time I had learned of a link between the East African embassy attack of 1998 and the Cole of 2000.  Played news clips of Bill Clinton and John McCain swearing to pursue justice at all costs.  Joined by Admiral Richard Natter, commanding 2nd and 5th Fleet on the day of the Cole, who spoke of getting on a plane in Panama and heading to the Gulf.  Also spoke to a mother of one of the KIA sailors. George Friedman of Stratfor spoke in detail of Al Q. My engineer that evenings as Mike Sivilli of WABC.  I was just doing a weekend show, four hours on Saturday and bother two on Sunday, long form programming, devoted to history subjects like Lincoln or the Cold War).   On Tuesday 11 September, I was in the Periodicals Room at Columbia's Butler Library, writing a First World War novel.  About 9:05 am I went to the front of the room to check the opening trends on the NYSE and saw on the hard-wired PC the inexplicable news of the first plane hitting the North Tower (which happened about 8:46 am).  Soon, after there was stunning Yahoo news of the second plane hitting (my memory is that I was the only one in the room watching the bulletins: those were the pre-wireless days, before Blackberry and long before IPhone), I got a call on my mobile from a news source who was working in Washington for Fox News. He said, "It's an attack," and got off the line.  I left the library to fetch the children from the Cathedral School nearby, figuring correctly that school would be closed early.  About 11:30 AM, Mike Sivilli called me on my mobile from WABC studios. He sounded doomed; my memory is that he asked bluntly, "Who did this?  You know, I listened to you on Saturday, who is it?" I told him what I had learned on Saturday: there were there possibilities of terror gangs who had the MO to attack buildings with suicide teams: 1. Al Qaeda of Afghanistan. 2 Hizballah of Beirut. 3. PFLP of West Bank and Gaza. Mike Sivilli explained briefly that his sister was in the building, at just about the Flight 11 strike level on the 81st or 82nd floor of the North Tower (cannot recall), and that he couldn't reach her by phone. He said his brother in law was on of the Ladder companies that responded, and he couldn't reach him on his phone. I told him I would find out more about the attack. Mike got off quickly. It turned out his sister, who worked for MTA, got out of the building by walking down the stairs.  I didn't learn until later that Mike's sister learned of the attack when her secretary burst into her office screaming, because the woman was on fire. The next day, Wednesday 12 September, I got a call from WABC.  I was with the children in Central Park, and I could see the debris cloud rising like a volcanic plume in the blue sky.  The call was succinct.  WABC said they'd heard (likely from Sivilli) that I knew something about who had attacked us.    WABC asked if I could take on the 10-1 AM shift that night and going forward for awhile, "Until we figure this out."  I said, "Sure;" and I have been on WABC ever since.  On Sunday 11, 2011, I will broadcast from the new WTC, from Radio Row.  Of special note, George Friedman of Stratfor.com will join me, and we will review what we talked about on September 8, 2001 and again the day after, on my first weekday show, September 12, 2001.  Along with my usual panels, I will be joined by Major Mark Tillman (USAF retired), who captained Air Force 1 on September 11, 2001, carrying POTUS Bush and his staff from Florida and across America.  We will all remember where we were that day like no other.

In the summer of 1948,  President Harry Truman faced a deep recession and the dropping of the Iron Curtain across Germany and Europe. The polls showed Republican Governor Tom Dewey leading by double digits. What did Truman do? Just what President Obama is starting with his "jobs speech."   He attacked the "do-nothing Republican Congress."   President Obama's fiery "American Jobs Act" speech to an unusual joint session of Congress is jammed full of familiar Obama administration wishes upon a star for cash and credit. The president repeated the unusual exhortation, "Pass this bill!" throughout the speech, a surprising demonstration of presumption toward an equal branch of government during a vulnerable period in which the US is facing a recession threat.    And does the president expect Congress to respond positively?   No.  Rather, the president expects that Congress will do-nothing. Setting up the campaign of 2012 with the same formula that worked for Harry Truman in 1948 against long odds for relection. Barack Obama versus the "do-nothing Congress" of Republicans.

Spoke Gary Becker, Hoover (Nobelist economist, 1992) and Frank Keating, American Bankers Association, and Nan Hayworth, NY-19, and John Nichols, The Nation, and collectively they tell a tale of uncertainty in the Obama administration that points to a major storm ahead in the economy and in the political marketplace. The uncertainty of the last 30 months results in hesitation, doubt, caution, and an overall credit strike by lenders and borrowers. Confidence is missing. Can POTUS repair the damage in one speech? Nan Hayworth indicates that POTUS will blame the GOP for obstruction and negativity. Will there be more of the class warfare? John Nichols indicates that POTUS will not use the word "stimulus"  though he is likely to ask for money for job programs. In all, a grim picture. Bill McGurn, WSJ, tells me that the speech scheduling is likely the result of confusion at the White House between the NFL opener and the wish for POTUS to act firm: the result is that POTUS looks timid and vague. A joint session of Congress on national television to repeat the same uncertain path of the last 30 months?  Starting to blow a rude wind now.  In late news, the Yahoo board fired the CEO, Carol Bartz, another one in the jobless ranks; and this is Silicon Valley elite turning the guns on themselves.

Speak to Texas Tribune routinely since the origins of Rick Perry's presidential campaign, and the facts support the Perry narrative that in his ten years as governor, inheriting the role form GW Bush in '01, Perry has supported a "business climate" that creates private sector jobs while limiting and reducing public sector jobs. Oil and gas jobs create wealth for services and construction. The 2012 campaign looks now entirely focused on job creation as a way to grow out of the housing collapse and the credit strike. Foreign policy, fiscal policy, social policy, all three will play secondary roles in the GOP primary season and in the general contest. Ronald Reagan's question to POTUS Carter in their one debate, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" will be replaced by, "Do you have a better job now than you did four years ago?"  POTUS Obama's approach to job creation was to borrow at least $2 trillion and transfer it to the states to pay for public sector jobs (see the minimal public sector decline in '09-'11) that are now being lost at a swelling rate.  In sum, POTUS Obama did not solve a problem, he delayed it by using the Federal checkwriters to pay for the state checkwriters: we maintained a public union workforce that has developed into an elite state within a state (all those California retirement checks exceeding $100,000 per annum and not even living in CA, etc).  The August jobless rate includes the loss of 55,000 public jobs, a blow that is easily explained by the state and municipal cutbacks forced by the slowing economy and fall-off in property and consumer tax revenues.  Gee.  Private sector employers are not hiring because they anticipate a slow fall and winter demand and have plenty of inventory.  The game for a private company is to use contractor help, or part-timers, to fill a position that cannot be filled with productivity.  Anecdotes such as this below, from WSJ, suggest that the caution is routine across the country, even in the employer-friendly Southland: http://on.wsj.com/pAKsTF

Asia manufacturing slows, because the customers for the exports in Europe and America are expecting another slow fall and winter and are delaying shopping or reducing the budgets for back-to-school.  In the US, the Obama administration finally marks down its predictions for GDP and employment for the remainder of this year (one month left in the Q3) and for all of 2012, and the result is frail and suggestive of worse. The reduction for the GDP this year is from 2.7 to 1.7 % GDP, which translates into the sluggishness in hiring and the caution in investing.  The jobless rate for all of the election year is projected at 9% and higher.  What surprises is that critics claim these numbers are based on rosy scenarios.  Rosy?  Am waiting the few hours till the August jobs number is released; however, the major shops are already crumbling to reduce their estimates for hires to a meager 75,000 -- way less than we need to stay even with the population growth.  POTUS jobs proposals on Thursday 8 September is a campaign tool, not state policy.  POTUS long ago lost control of the narrative about jobs.  The earliest we are to see even 4% GDP growth is 2015.  Gasp.  What will a second Obama administration look like?   Why does POTUS want a job he has not solved?  The blame-shifting at the White House must be Olympic-class.

The DOJ move to block the No. 2 AT&T acquisition of the No. 4 T-Mobile presents an example of how the Obama administration and Washington in general do not and cannot understand how American business growth works. The future is bandwidth and the speed it will deliver; the future is wireless interconnectivity for information; the future is not the carrier but the content. The DOJ argument that a combination of No. 2 and No.4 is anti-consumer and even semi-monolopolistic does not suit the facts. T-Mobile is out of date and falling behind just because it has not made the investments needed to stay with the Verizon iPhone deal just concluded. I have used T-Mobile since 2001; and while it was adequate with a BlackBerry 2002-2007, it has not matched the tool set of the iPhone with AT&T. Justice is fishing in dark waters.  What will make communications grow and change is a smooth interconnectivity that allows all of us to participate from coast to coast and, eventually, worldwide.  The idea that prices will rise is a canard.  Prices are cheaper and cheaper for the same service, and only the new services invite new pricing.  Competition means that consumers can play off the carriers and the software, not that we are all standing in line waiting for a phone booth.  The Obama administration disconnects: the DOJ suit is laughable if not a judgment of the gang that couldn't figure out that the business of America is business, not hand-wringing paternalism.

The puzzle is why the White House would schedule a Joint Session of Congress for a jobs speech in the first place for a presentation that promises nothing new and plenty of stale.  Scheduling the speech on the same evening and at the same time at the Republican nomination debate at the Reagan Library in California at least has the merit of being an in-your-face game.  John Boehner objected and ask to move POTUS remarks to Thursday 8.   The White House relented and moved.  Why did all this happen?  POTUS is unlucky?  There's a Jonah at the White House?   The White House scheduling manages to highlight the GOP debate and slight the jobs speech.  Will anyone whose job it is to watch actually watch POTUS on Thursday 8?